Callaghan, Dr. Russ

Before arriving at the Northern Medical Program (NMP) in January 2013, Dr. Callaghan graduated with a PhD (Psychology) at the University of Toronto and worked as a Research Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – Canada’s largest psychiatric and addiction research and treatment hospital. Currently, Dr. Callaghan is a Professor in the NMP, and holds holds an Affiliate Professor position in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

Research Interests

Over the last seven years or so, a major line of my research program has focused on estimating the impacts of cannabis use on human health.
This line of research has produced a series of studies assessing the relation between cannabis use (or cannabis-use disorders) and a range of health outcomes, including:
(1) persistent psychotic syndromes (Callaghan, et al., 2011);
(2) mortality patterns (Callaghan, et al., 2012);
(3) fatal and non-fatal motor vehicle collisions (Callaghan, et al., 2013);
(4) lung cancer (Callaghan et al., 2013);
(5) testicular cancer (Callaghan, et al., 2017); and
(6) a systematic review of cannabis use and development of cancer in humans (Callaghan, et al., 2017).

Ongoing and future work will assess the relation between cannabis use and the following outcomes: non-traffic injury (e.g., falls, assaults, suicide), all-cause mortality, and workplace injury.